


Unrest in the Alienage

by DeCarabas



Series: Fugitives Together [8]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Act 1, Dragon Age Quest: Unrest in the Alienage, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2019-02-11 20:38:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12943401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeCarabas/pseuds/DeCarabas
Summary: On free magical clinics, and Anders' and Merrill's differing ways of dealing with people's fear.





	Unrest in the Alienage

It’s not a sound, exactly, what Anders has been hearing all through Darktown. It’s more like the song that magic has started to sing in his head ever since Justice. This constant background noise tugging at him.

The not-sound is clearer at the Bone Pit, away from the distractions of the city, so clear he can almost put it in words: _I have been wronged. Put it right_. Though the slaves who died there are far beyond any justice he could give them.

And that the refugees of Darktown have been wronged in so many ways is not exactly new information. But that call remains, like looking at a painting that’s hung just slightly askew and not being able to straighten it.

It seems clearer after a trip outside the city with Hawke, after taking that short break from it. 

Clearest when he gets back to his clinic, where one of the elven refugees is watching the door again.

Anders doesn’t know the elf’s name, but he knows him by sight. The first time Anders had seen him waiting around outside, Anders had asked him if he was looking for healing, but the man had run off. Since then, he’s let him be.

But there’s that tug at the back of his mind, just like at the Bone Pit. Niggling at him.

Before Hawke and the others leave, he asks Merrill if she’d speak to that refugee, ask him if he needs help from the clinic. “He won’t talk to me,” he says.

“Why would he talk to me, then? He doesn’t know me.”

Merrill once said two words in elvish to a woman from the alienage and Anders had just about thought the woman was going to die of shock. Velanna had gotten that reaction a lot. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s the tattoos.”

She rolls her eyes at him.

But the next time he sees Merrill, she has a story about the refugees from Denerim’s alienage. About mages who’d come to the poorest part of town and opened up a clinic, promising to use their magic to heal people without any payment in return. And then their patients started disappearing.

Slavers using a mage-run free clinic as a front. 

“He thinks I’m selling people.”

“He’s making sure you don’t. Anyway, Mahariel’s the one who put a stop to it,” she says. She always sounds so much warmer when she talks about the commander. “I’m surprised you didn’t hear about this from the Grey Wardens.”

But he hadn’t heard. From the Wardens, or from any of the Blight refugees, even the ones from Denerim. He hasn’t had very many elven refugees in the clinic. He’d never thought about that before. “…I have to fix this.” 

But the slavers are long dead, and there’s just the fear they left behind. Yet again.

“Have you tried not enslaving people?” He shoots her a look, and she just says, “Well? That’s how trust works, isn’t it? You have to give people time to see you’re not going to hurt them. You can’t argue them into seeing things your way. That never works.”

Sounds too much like all the loyalists in the Circle waiting and hoping to earn trust through good behavior. Centuries of that hasn’t made the people fear them any less. It’s just complacency. And there’s that tug in the back of his mind every time he sees that man watching his door. Past injustice like a wound that’s been reopened.

“You keep doing whatever you’re doing, and sooner or later they’ll see you’re harmless,” she says. “Or mostly harmless. Not a slaver, anyway. Like with you and me and the blood magic.” 

“That isn’t harmless. You put yourself in grave danger every time you use—”

“But you don’t try to lecture me like that every time anymore, so that’s progress.”

He gets the impression she’s laughing at him.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Anders' line at the Bone Pit: "Generations of slaves died in that mine. I can still feel their cries for justice."


End file.
